Programming Languages Dan Grossman 2013 Everything is an Object

Pure OOP Ruby is fully committed to OOP: Every value is a reference to an object Simpler, smaller semantics Can call methods on anything –May just get a dynamic “undefined method” error Almost everything is a method call –Example: Jan-Mar 20132Dan Grossman, Programming Languages

Some examples Numbers have methods like +, abs, nonzero?, etc. nil is an object used as a “nothing” object –Like null in Java/C#/C++ except it is an object –Every object has a nil? method, where nil returns true for it –Note: nil and false are “false”, everything else is “true” Strings also have a + method –String concatenation –Example: "hello" + 3.to_s Jan-Mar 20133Dan Grossman, Programming Languages

All code is methods All methods you define are part of a class Top-level methods (in file or REPL) just added to Object class Subclassing discussion coming later, but: –Since all classes you define are subclasses of Object, all inherit the top-level methods –So you can call these methods anywhere in the program –Unless a class overrides (roughly-not-exactly, shadows) it by defining a method with the same name Jan-Mar 20134Dan Grossman, Programming Languages

Reflection and exploratory programming All objects also have methods like: –methods –class Can use at run-time to query “what an object can do” and respond accordingly –Called reflection Also useful in the REPL to explore what methods are available –May be quicker than consulting full documentation Another example of “just objects and method calls” Jan-Mar 20135Dan Grossman, Programming Languages